


Concern

by xxSparksxx



Category: Poldark (TV 2015), Poldark - All Media Types
Genre: Advice, Demelza is a saint, Gen, Missing Scene, Parenthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-10-20 19:15:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20680529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xxSparksxx/pseuds/xxSparksxx
Summary: Perhaps she’s overstepping the mark, but Elizabeth is dead. Valentine’s mother is dead. It should be she that points these things out to George, she that finds the right way to speak to George about the subjects Demelza feels bound, somehow, to broach with him. But Elizabeth is cold and buried, and George has neither mother nor sister, nobody with more tender feelings who might be able to reach out to him, to show him Valentine’s loneliness. Demelza has this one opportunity to try to do them both some good. It’s not her responsibility, not her concern, but still she will try. For the sake of the child, the little boy who might be Ross’s son or George’s son but who is, whatever else, an innocent.





	Concern

**Author's Note:**

> Demelza, canonically, is pretty much a saint in terms of her kindness to those who might otherwise wrong her. I think we all recognise this fact. And Valentine in s5 is a lonely, frustrated little boy who just wants some company. George has nobody else to tell him these things. Demelza, I felt, might take the opportunity afforded by George's visit to Nampara to try to get him to see Valentine's isolation. This is what happened when I tried to put that feeling into words.
> 
> Beta-read by the lovely Lucretiassister.

An impulse makes Demelza follow George, after the brief, peculiar conversation in her kitchen. She gestures for Ross to stay where he is, makes sure her hands are free of chicken feathers, and then follows George to the front door and beyond, catching up with him just as he reaches his horse.

She doesn’t know why, precisely, she feels moved to speak to him. He’s rarely shown her anything except scorn – cloaked in gentility sometimes, when they’ve been in company, but scorn nonetheless. She owes him nothing, there’s no favour he’s ever done her that she might feel moved to repay in this manner. She would be glad to think she would never see George Warleggan again; indeed, she would be only passing sorry if he were to suddenly fall ill and follow his wife into death. And the sorrow she would feel would be for his children, not for he himself. He has harmed her family so very much, over the years. Not just Ross, but Drake also, and Sam, and Morwenna. He has injured Geoffrey Charles, by refusing to follow Elizabeth’s wishes for him. He has put people out of work and happily abandoned them to starvation. All these things mean she can never like nor respect him.

But for his children’s sake – for the sake of the lost little boy that is Valentine – she obeys the impulse to follow him, and calls out his name before he can do more than grasp his saddle in preparation for mounting. He pauses, turns, but doesn’t quite look at her.

“Yes?” he asks, in the same quiet manner with which he’d told them that he was shutting up Trenwith and asked them to forbid Valentine from visiting. It’s antagonism that he’s lacking, she realises. For so long his every word to her, and to Ross, has had that caustic edge. But Elizabeth is no more, and she was always the biggest bone of contention between the two men. Something in George has settled, perhaps, now the constant threat of that relationship has been buried alongside his dead wife. No doubt he and Ross will continue to clash in Parliament, and in local matters, but perhaps there’s no longer reason for either man to retreat into their such extreme rancour. 

“’Tis about Valentine,” she offers. That makes something spark in him: anger, resentment, she knows not. But a spark nonetheless.

“My _son_,” he says, with heavy emphasis, “is none of your concern.”

“No, he’s not,” she agrees, “and I’ve no right to ask you to listen, no right at all – except as one parent to another.” His shoulders seem to stiffen even more, if such a thing is possible. He doesn’t want to hear anything she has to say about his son. And perhaps he’s right, perhaps she’s overstepping the mark, but Elizabeth is dead. Valentine’s mother is dead. It should be she that points these things out to George, she that finds the right way to speak to George about the subjects Demelza feels bound, somehow, to broach with him. But Elizabeth is cold and buried, and George has neither mother nor sister, nobody with more tender feelings who might be able to reach out to him, to show him Valentine’s loneliness. Demelza has this one opportunity to try to do them both some good. It’s not her responsibility, not her concern, but still she will try. For the sake of the child, the little boy who might be Ross’s son or George’s son but who is, whatever else, an innocent.

Despite her reservations, and though he holds himself stiffly and still doesn’t look straight at her, George doesn’t move away, nor does he offer her any insult. So Demelza has some hope that perhaps she’s doing the right thing, after all.

“I think he’s lonely,” she says, as gently as she can, taking care to keep her voice and expression free from judgement. 

“Lonely? How can he be lonely,” George scoffs. “He has his sister, and the nurse, and myself.”

“But you’re often working, and perhaps he feels he mustn’t disturb you,” Demelza presses him. Still speaking gently, as mild and unassuming as she can manage. “He made mention that the nurse is always busy with the baby, which is only right, of course. Babies need so much attention. But he’s a little older, and a baby sister is no companion to a boy his age.” She pauses to let that sink in. There’s some expression on George’s face, now, that she can’t read. She doesn’t know him well enough to know the complexities of him. After a few moments she continues, even more delicately than before. “I think he misses his half-brother, also. And I know Geoffrey Charles thinks very fondly of him.”

“Geoffrey Charles is an ungrateful –,”

“They are both Elizabeth’s sons, after all,” Demelza is swift to point out, knowing that George has never cared for Geoffrey Charles, not even in the early days of his courtship of and marriage to Elizabeth. But using her name, she feels, may help George to recognise the fraternal bond that time and distance have not been enough to erase. 

She sees anger flare in him, but only for a moment. Then it is hidden. He clears his throat, lifts his chin, and returns to the quiet, unemotional visage he’d shown earlier, in the kitchen. 

“Why should you care if my son is lonely?” he inquires. “There was no love lost between you and my wife. Do not pretend you care for him for her sake.”

“No,” she says. “No, there was no love lost. But a lonely child is a lonely child, George, and it may be…” She hesitates, choosing her words very carefully. He looks straight at her finally, a close examination, as if he’s looking for something. Some hidden secret, perhaps. But she has nothing to conceal from him. “I think he may have asked to visit us here to play with my children,” she suggests at last. “I don’t ask you to allow those visits to continue, only I thought, if you didn’t know he was maybe feeling lonely, perhaps you might wish to hear it said. His mother’s no longer here to notice the things that…that any mother sees in any child she meets. That’s all.”

George says nothing. He’s looking at her, brow furrowed a little, as if she’s done something he didn’t expect. She lets him look; at least his expression isn’t full of scorn. Just confusion, she thinks. But then, he’s had so little experience of mothers. His own, she knows, had died when he was young. Elizabeth’s relationship with Geoffrey Charles had been so insular, allowing nobody else within their perfect circle. She doesn’t know, of course, how Elizabeth was with Valentine – but that hardly matters now. Lacking a mother these past two years, Valentine has grown into an awkward age and a lonely child. It might not have happened if Elizabeth had lived, but there’s no use wishing the past to change. 

Still George says nothing, but Demelza feels compelled to continue nonetheless, not least by the knowledge that Ross won’t obey her wishes for long; soon enough he’ll be coming out here to see what’s going on, why he hasn’t heard George’s horse departing. And there’s plenty of work to be getting on with, too. She really can’t spend all day here, waiting for him to speak. Especially since he’ll hardly be likely to be civil. It’s not her place to say these things to him, after all, and no doubt he’ll take delight in saying so, again – but though there are others who have seen the child’s isolation, there is nobody else who would dare stick their neck out on Valentine’s behalf, not with George’s tendency to offence and retribution so well-known.

It is, perhaps, a duty she feels she owes to her old rival. She once saved one of Elizabeth’s sons from illness. She would like to save the other from the bitterness that can come with loneliness.

“You might wish to find other children that you’re happier for him to play with,” she tells George. “He’s young, still. He wants boys and girls of his own age. That’s what all children want. Lady Whitworth’s grandson isn’t so very much younger than your son, is he? Their mothers were cousins, it would be…appropriate, for them to know each other, would it not? And there must be others, in Truro.”

“I -,” He clears his throat. “I will take your advice in the spirit it was meant,” he says, with much less derision than Demelza had half expected. “But as he is my son, I will thank you not to involve yourself further.”

“Of course.” She accepts it, having expected no less. “Goodbye, then.”

“Yes. Goodbye.”

He mounts his horse, not gracefully but efficiently enough, and in a few moments he’s riding away, off across the meadow in the direction of Trenwith. It’s a lonely house these days, or at least she had thought so, when Geoffrey Charles invited them all to dinner there. A lonely house, a lonely child, and perhaps a lonely man. But they’re no concern of hers, really, and as George passes out of sight, Demelza puts him and his family out of her mind. She’s done as much as she can do, more than anyone could expect from her. It had been a foolish impulse, and no doubt Ross will tell her so. But she thinks she will sleep a little easier tonight, for having tried to give the poor motherless boy a better chance at a happier life.


End file.
